3.1 Jörð
28th of February, 2011
Zoey looks up from her crosswords as she hears the sounds of tiny footsteps climbing down the stairs, and finds herself looking at her niece as the girl makes a slow beeline for the breakfast table with all the energy of the common sloth.
"Good morning, Jacky," she greets her, a smile threatening to curl the edge of her lips when the diminutive redhead answers something that can only generously be considered intelligible back, "Did you sleep well?"
"'f-fine," her niece answers while badly stifling a jaw-cracking yawn as she sits herself at the table, making an aborted grabby motion toward the bottle of orange juice when she notices the full glass already waiting for her due to Zoey's attentiveness.
A slow blink, then she's drinking the thing in one long, slow pull, and starts behaving like a normal human being almost as soon as the empty glass hits the table with a soft click.
"Thank you, aunt Zoey," Jacky says, her politeness and poise somehow magically restored, and this time Zoey truly smiles in fondness.
It was kind of cute, seeing the girl behave like that. She kept rising at six am sharp every day of the week to go for a jog – during which Zoey kept invariably fretting about her safety despite their neighborhood, but it's a mother's job to worry – but always ended up looking like she just got out of bed after taking her morning shower for some reason.
In Zoey's opinion, her niece was incredibly low maintenance, but she still had some little quirks that made her feel less like a too-mature child and more like someone her true age.
Like her creepy-cute – emphasis on the creepy part – art or her childish fervor with everything incense.
… Alright, maybe her niece was a bit more quirky than the norm, but she remained very self-sufficient for a child her age, which could only be a boon now that she was aware how exactly her youngest fared mentally.
"Where are the others?" Jacky asks aloud, warm brown eyes curious and sharp as she looks around the house's first floor.
"Emma had an appointment this morning," Zoey answers, the euphemism now sadly familiar on her tongue, "Alan volunteered to chauffeur her before going to work."
It wasn't exactly a secret in the house that her youngest had bi-weekly rendez-vous with her psychiatrist, but the guilt eating at her made her uncomfortable to put the truth in so many words.
"I see," her niece answers with all the seriousness of a twelve year old, sending her mane of red hair–
Zoey frowns, before half-leaning across the table.
"Jacky, when did your hair grow so much?" she finds herself asking.
Her charge blinks back in confusion, a half-eaten toast in her hand as she tries – and adorably fails – to give her haircut a look, eyes looking this way and that in a futile effort.
By the time the girl has found her words – "I don't know?" – Zoey is already standing at her back and hard at work trying to assemble the fluffy curtain into an approximation of the girl's usual braided high ponytail.
She gives the result a considering look before nodding to herself.
"I'm making you an appointment with a hairdresser this week," she declares with finality as she lets go of the girl's hair, letting them fall into an almost commercial-worthy waterfall–
"Does it look bad?" her niece asks, a self-conscious note of distress in her voice.
"No, no! Actually, it looks really nice!" Zoey quickly reassures her, bending over a little to lock eyes with her, one hand coming to soothingly comb some of the fluffy red mane out of the girl's eyes, "I don't know what you're doing with them, but keep doing it, your hair looks absolutely gorgeous! But it needs just a little bit of a professional's touch to make it really pop, alright?"
The girl mutely stares back at her, eyes locked with hers for a solid couple of seconds, before slowly nodding.
"If you say so, aunt Zoey," she answers a bit non-commitally.
"I'm serious, you have gorgeous hair sweetie," she gives her niece a fond pat, before going back to her seat across from her, "I'm half a mind to start using your brand of shampoo for myself."
***
I blankly look back at my reflection as I finish washing my teeth before going to school and utter the words which will forever heavily weigh on my soul.
"I'm developing anime hair," I deadpan to the world at large.
The evidence is staring right back at me. I can already see the beginning of gorgeous and utterly nonsensical anime fluffiness in my usual straight red locks in the mirror.
"Why am I developing anime hair?" I whine wonder aloud, "Dark-chan? Dark-chan, are you here?!"
Cold-like-grave fingers, scratching pleasantly at my scalp.
"Do not," I bat at her hand with a hiss, before wagging a finger in her vague direction, "Try to butter me up! Are you responsible for this?!"
A feeling of amusement hovers at the edge of my thoughts for a heartbeat before–
A too-rigid digit, gently poking at my ribs.
My brows scrunches all up as I try to parse her meaning, until it suddenly hits me.
"... Is this a Ka thing?" I question my Spirit, earning the impression of a nod.
"Of course it's a Ka thing," I groan out loud, one hand coming to rub at my temple in exasperation, "That explains so much about your home reality, you know?"
I get the vague impression of an unconcerned shrug – which is more than fair, since she's kinda bald herself – before Dark-chan decides to wander off, leaving me alone with the realization that I'm condemned to forever deal with anime hair because I wanted me some cool, spooky shadow magic.
***
"Say, Jacky," Missy suddenly asks out of the blue while looking intensely at me during lunch, "Did you do something with your hair?"
Despite my superior command over my body language, my eyebrow twitches.
"I asked the same thing this morning!" Louise, the traitor, enthusiastically babbles, "But she doesn't want to say."
"I didn't say that," I snap deny, "I said that I've changed my shampoo is all."
"Really?" my friend challenges, "And what's your new brand exactly?"
"Something egyptian, you wouldn't have heard about it," I blandly answer back.
"See what I mean?" the girl gestures in my direction, "She doesn't want to say."
The following chorus of agreement wrenches a painful groan of embarrassment out of me.
***
Despite the anime-related silliness of the day, I had successfully managed to make a shortlist of everything I wanted from my Wolfenstein specialization by the time school had ended.
I had two things at the top of my list that were, in my opinion, non-negotiable.
The first was the God Key, one of the MacGuffins of the Wolfenstein series. As a literal plot device in the game, it serves multiple purposes, but the two that interests me the most are its use as an interdimensional gateway opener and its anti-gravity properties. The first because while I heavily doubt that it'll let me solve Bet's problems with the snap of my fingers, it'll definitively help me have my foot in the door so to speak; and the second because who doesn't want to fly if they can?
My hopes are that if I built the thing from scratch, I'd have a better shot at deciphering what makes it tick as opposed to Norman Caldwell – poor guy was so certain it was extraterrestrial in origin, learning it originated from the Jewish equivalent of the Illuminatis must've floored him.
Speaking about the Da'at Yichud: I want their Power Suit tech, full stops. More specifically, I keep thinking in circles about the stealth variant and the Callidus asset in me is positively giddy at the idea of having the ability to turn invisible at the drop of a hat; that, and I'm also intrigued by their mind-machine interface. I had the opportunity to study a similar principle with both of my previous specializations but was sadly too swamped with possibilities during my jaunt with 40K and 'lost' too much time learning magic afterward. I'm not about to pass up the possibility for a third time, especially since this variant has been designed with clear military applications in mind. It's no Mechanicus MIU, but it'll do.
Beyond those two items in particular, things start to get a little more blurry. I'd like to study Wolfenstein's laser weaponry in a bid to take another go at the Imperium of Man's own take on it, since Dell still has the blueprints. There are a couple of other weapons that have my attention – the setting's suppressors are honestly complete bullshit; maybe take a look at the Thule Medallion – even though the gheists freaks me out; and lastly, I have to admit that the Nazis' prowess with robotics tickles my interests somewhat fiercely.
I slap a hand over my mouth in an attempt to smother a giggle, before giving up.
"I should make a Panzerhund and call it Hooky, just for the joke," I let out with a cackle.
Now, time to take an inventory of what I retained from my previous specialization. I still understand the Millenium Spellbook front to back, which means that it has an utility beyond being a rather odd curio – maybe one day I'll turn myself into this dimension's Pharaoh, but today is not that day; I just know how to paint and draw, which surprised me a little at first, until I realized that it's a major component of being able to summon a Spirit into a vessel like I did with Dark-chan – which is another piece of good news, since it means that I'm still theoretically able to drop a Tactical Winged Dragon of Râ on an unsuspecting enemy, as long as I have a proper sacrifice to offer the God so as to not anger him too much and actually survive painting him in the first place; I have an understanding of hologram-related technologies light-years ahead of everyone on Earth Bet; I kept a very good grasp on computer hardware and components miniaturization – not to Halbeard's degree, obviously, but still nothing to scoff at; and my gamble with the Ener-D generator paid off, since I can still picture in my mind how to upscale it back to be able to power an entire city!
Granted, I was ninety percent sure it'd work with that last part, since I had more-or-less pulled the same kind of gamble with my Power Dagger, but it's better to have twice the confirmations before I start crafting 1:10 scale models of the shit I want, only to end up disappointed in the aftermath!
All in all, I'm positively raring to go experiment with my current specialization–
A ghost-like digit, impatiently poking at my cheek.
"I'm coming, Dark-chan," I sigh, my shoulders slumping just a little at being denied for the time being.
–but I still have to practice Destiny Board's spell form first before I'm allowed to play rob someone blind running circles around the gangs and the heroes truly start tinkering with Wolfenstein.
Let's wrap this up in two days, I swear to myself as I step into my mind-slash-soulscape realm-thing, then we'll have some fun!